EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book One Man s Crusade to Crush the Hawaiian Mob

Download or read book One Man s Crusade to Crush the Hawaiian Mob written by Jason Ryan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-class beaches, fragrant frangipani, swaying palms, and hula girls. Most folks think of Hawaii as a vacation destination. Mob-style executions, drug smuggling, and vicious gang warfare are seldom part of the postcard image. Yet, Hawaii was once home to not only Aloha spirit, but also a ruthless, homegrown mafia underworld. From 1960 to 1980, Hawaiian gangsters grew rich off a robust trade in drugs, gambling, and prostitution that followed in the wake of Hawaii’s tourist boom. Thus, by 1980—the year Charles Marsland was elected Honolulu's top prosecutor—the honeymoon island paradise was also plagued by violence, corruption and organized crime. The zeal that Marsland brought to his crusade against the Hawaiian underworld was relentless, self-destructive, and very personal. Five years earlier, Marsland’s son had been gunned down. His efforts to bring his son’s killers to justice—and indeed, eradicate the entire organized criminal element in Hawaii—make for an extraordinary tale that culminates with intense courtroom drama. Hawaii Five-O meets Wiseguy in author Jason Ryan’s vigorously reported chronicle of brazen gangsters, brutal murders, and a father’s quest for vengeance—all set against an unlikely backdrop of seductive tropical beauty.

Book Hell Bent

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jason Ryan
  • Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
  • Release : 2014-11-04
  • ISBN : 1493016296
  • Pages : 317 pages

Download or read book Hell Bent written by Jason Ryan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-class beaches, fragrant frangipani, swaying palms, and hula girls. Most folks think of Hawaii as a vacation destination. Mob-style executions, drug smuggling, and vicious gang warfare are seldom part of the postcard image. Yet, Hawaii was once home to not only Aloha spirit, but also a ruthless, homegrown mafia underworld. From 1960 to 1980, Hawaiian gangsters grew rich off a robust trade in drugs, gambling, and prostitution that followed in the wake of Hawaii’s tourist boom. Thus, by 1980—the year Charles Marsland was elected Honolulu's top prosecutor—the honeymoon island paradise was also plagued by violence, corruption and organized crime. The zeal that Marsland brought to his crusade against the Hawaiian underworld was relentless, self-destructive, and very personal. Five years earlier, Marsland’s son had been gunned down. His efforts to bring his son’s killers to justice—and indeed, eradicate the entire organized criminal element in Hawaii—make for an extraordinary tale that culminates with intense courtroom drama. Hawaii Five-O meets Wiseguy in author Jason Ryan’s vigorously reported chronicle of brazen gangsters, brutal murders, and a father’s quest for vengeance—all set against an unlikely backdrop of seductive tropical beauty.

Book Jackpot

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jason Ryan
  • Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
  • Release : 2012-08-07
  • ISBN : 0762767995
  • Pages : 333 pages

Download or read book Jackpot written by Jason Ryan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1970s and early '80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard’s marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs. In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country’s most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law. In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America's controversial Drug Wars. “The adventures, the long-gone economy, and the sting that ultimately brought them down and changed US drug policy are meticulously documented and lucidly spun…. Part New Yorker feature-part Jimmy Buffet song. . . . The result is adventuresome, lavish, informative fun.” —GQ “[A] rollicking story, Ryan manages to pack in one amusing tale after another.... Jackpot is a rip-roaring good read.” —Charleston City Paper “High times on the high seas: Investigative reporter Ryan recounts the glory days of dope smuggling and their terrible denouement.... A well-told tale of true crime that provides a few good arguments for why it should not be a crime at all.” —Kirkus Reviews “Reads like an international thriller. . . . chock-a-block with hilarious and hair-raising anecdotes of fast times.” —New York Journal of Books “[A] thoroughly researched account of Operation Jackpot, the drug investigation that ended the reign of South Carolina’s ‘gentlemen smugglers,’.... Ryan recreates the era with a vivid, sun-drenched intensity.” —Publishers Weekly

Book Swamp Kings

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jason Ryan
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2024-04-02
  • ISBN : 1639365680
  • Pages : 325 pages

Download or read book Swamp Kings written by Jason Ryan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious Lowcountry clan, in all its Southern Gothic intensity—by an author with unparalleled access to and knowledge of the players, the history, and the place. The most famous man in South Carolina lives in prison. He stands convicted of a staggering amount of wrongdoing—more than 100 crimes and counting. Once a high-flying, smooth-talking, pedigreed Southern lawyer, Alex Murdaugh is now disbarred and disgraced. For more than a decade, prosecutors asserted that Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug trafficker, and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claimed, he also became a killer, shooting dead his wife and son in a desperate bid to escape accountability. The many crimes of Alex Murdaugh, exposed piecemeal over the last two years, have appalled the general public. Yet his implosion—the spectacular manner in which he has turned his vaunted family name to mud—has also proved mesmerizing. With every revelation, Alex Murdaugh has been shown to be a man without bottom, though he insists he never harmed his family. Remarkably, all of his misdeeds have precedent. In Swamp Kings, Jason Ryan reveals Alex’s evil actions are only the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to the Murdaugh family of Hampton County, history has a way of repeating itself. For every alleged, headline-grabbing crime associated with Alex Murdaugh, mirror-image incidents have played out within his family’s past, including parallel instances of fraud, theft, illicit trafficking of babies and booze, calamitous boat crashes, and even alleged murder. There were some crimes committed by Alex’s kin that even he would not dare mimic. Covering a century of depravity in an impoverished and isolated stretch of the Deep South, Swamp Kings weaves together the jaw-dropping narratives of generations of Murdaughs before culminating in the telling of a murder trial for the ages. Page after page the family’s legacy is laid bare as a spotlight is finally trained on the Murdaugh men who have long lorded over the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Book Sunny Skies  Shady Characters

Download or read book Sunny Skies Shady Characters written by James Dooley and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-08-31 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thirty years starting in the mid-1970s, the byline of Jim Dooley appeared on riveting investigative stories of organized crime and political corruption that headlined the front page of Honolulu’s morning daily. In Sunny Skies, Shady Characters, James Dooley revisits highlights of his career as a hard-hitting investigative reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser and, in later years, for KITV television and the online Hawaii Reporter. His lively backstories on how he chased these high-profile scandals make fascinating reading, while providing an insider’s look at the business of journalism and the craft of investigative reporting. Dooley’s first assignment as an investigative journalist involved the city housing project of Kukui Plaza, which introduced him to the “pay to play” method of awarding government contracts to obliging consultants. In later stories, he scrutinized bloody struggles over illicit gambling revenue, the murder of a city prosecutor’s son, local syndicate ties to the Teamsters Union, and the dealings of Bishop Estate. His groundbreaking coverage of the forays by yakuza into Hawaii and the continental United States were the first of its kind in American journalism. As Dooley pursued stories from the underside of island society, names of respected public figures and those of violent criminals filled his notebook: entertainer Don Ho, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Governors George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano, Mayor Frank Fasi, and notorious felons Henry Huihui, Nappy Pulawa, and Ronnie Ching. Woven throughout is the name of Big Island rancher Larry Mehau—was he the “godfather of organized crime” in Hawaii as alleged by the FBI, or simply an ex-cop who befriended power brokers in the course of doing business for his security guard firm? The book includes a timeline of Mehau’s activities to allow readers to judge for themselves.

Book Murder in Paradise

    Book Details:
  • Author : Chris Loos
  • Publisher : Harper Collins
  • Release : 2003-07-29
  • ISBN : 9780060093464
  • Pages : 396 pages

Download or read book Murder in Paradise written by Chris Loos and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2003-07-29 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shocking true story of the murder of 23–year–old Dana Ireland and the nine–year investigation that became Hawaii's most publicised murder case. By all accounts, 23–year–old Dana Ireland would have been successful at whatever she chose to do with her life. But she didn't get that chance. On Christmas Eve, 1991, this blonde–haired, blue–eyed young woman set off on her bicycle. As she was riding back to the holiday meal, three local youths decided to celebrate Christmas in a different way. They followed her in their car, then rammed her bike, kidnapped, raped, and beat her, and left her for dead on an isolated spot overlooking the ocean. In a community where many residents left their doors unlocked, people were shocked and terrified by this random, brutal act of violence. Worse still was that if the authorities hadn't taken so long to get to the victim, she might have lived. As months and years went by, frustration turned to outrage when police failed to arrest anyone for Dana's murder. But from his home in Springfield, Virginia, John Ireland started his own dogged investigation and crusade for justice. And nine years after his daughter's murder, after one of the most complicated cases the state had ever seen, three men were convicted. Here is a dramatic true story.

Book Generation Oxy

    Book Details:
  • Author : Douglas Dodd
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2017-10-10
  • ISBN : 1510723587
  • Pages : 279 pages

Download or read book Generation Oxy written by Douglas Dodd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generation Oxy is the story of a group of friends—clean cut, all-American high school kids—who stumbled into the Sunshine State’s murky underworld of illegal pill mills and corrupt doctors. This teenage criminal enterprise ultimately shipped hundreds of thousands of OxyContins and other prescription painkillers throughout the country, making millions in the process. This true crime memoir details the three-year-long rise and collapse of the Barabas Criminal Enterprise, an opiod-pill trafficking ring founded by Douglas Dodd and his best friend on the wrestling team, Lance Barabas. Raised by an alcoholic mother and surrounded by drug-abusing relatives, Dodd got involved in narcotics at an early age. Their scheme to sell the drugs he was already consuming coincided with the explosion of prescription addicts who were traveling the “Oxy Express” to Florida for easy access to the pills they dubbed “hillbilly heroin.” Soon they were shipping forty thousand pills a month, with tens of thousands of dollars returning in hollowed-out teddy bears. In Generation Oxy, Dodd recounts his time as a wannabe Scarface: bottle-service at clubs, an arsenal of weapons that would make Dillinger blush, narrow escapes from the law, hordes of young women, and as many pills as he could swallow. And this was all before he was legally able to drink a beer, while still living with his grandmother. The good times came to an end when the DEA closed in and the twenty-year-old Dodd faced life in federal prison.

Book Land and Power in Hawaii

Download or read book Land and Power in Hawaii written by George Cooper and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describe a pervasive way of conducting private and public affairs in which state and local office holders throughout Hawaii took their personal financial interests into account in their actions as public.

Book Race to Hawaii

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jason Ryan
  • Publisher : Chicago Review Press
  • Release : 2019-11-05
  • ISBN : 9781641602211
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Race to Hawaii written by Jason Ryan and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century ago, a flight to Hawaii was a twenty-six-hour journey across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific. The US Navy tried first; then Army Air Corps aviators and a civilian pilot informally raced each other to Hawaii in the weeks after Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. Finally came the Dole Derby, an unprecedented 1927 air race in which eight planes set off at once across the Pacific, all eager to claim a cash prize offered by Pineapple King, James Dole. The pilots encountered every type of hazard during their perilous flights, from fuel shortages to failed engines, forced sea landings and severe fatigue to navigational errors. Ryan chronicles these early attempts to open Hawaii to flights from the West Coast. -- adapted from Amazon.com info.

Book Broken Trust

    Book Details:
  • Author : Samuel P. King
  • Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
  • Release : 2006-01-01
  • ISBN : 9780824830144
  • Pages : 344 pages

Download or read book Broken Trust written by Samuel P. King and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop was the largest landowner and richest woman in the Hawaiian kingdom. Upon her death in 1884, she entrusted her property--"known as Bishop Estate--"to five trustees in order to create and maintain an institution that would benefit the children of Hawai'i: Kamehameha Schools. A century later, Bishop Estate controlled nearly one out of every nine acres in the state, a concentration of private land ownership rarely seen anywhere in the world. Then in August 1997 the unthinkable happened: Four revered kupuna (native Hawaiian elders) and a professor of trust-law publicly charged Bishop Estate trustees with gross incompetence and massive trust abuse. Entitled "Broken Trust," the statement provided devastating details of rigged appointments, violated trusts, cynical manipulation of the trust's beneficiaries, and the shameful involvement of many of Hawai'i's powerful. No one is better qualified to examine the events and personalities surrounding the scandal than two of the original "Broken Trust" authors.Their comprehensive account together with historical background, brings to light information that has never before been made public, including accounts of secret meetings and communications involving Supreme Court justices.

Book Red Notice

Download or read book Red Notice written by Bill Browder and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freezing Order, the follow-up to Red Notice, is available now! “[Red Notice] does for investing in Russia and the former Soviet Union what Liar’s Poker did for our understanding of Salomon Brothers, Wall Street, and the mortgage-backed securities business in the 1980s. Browder’s business saga meshes well with the story of corruption and murder in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, making Red Notice an early candidate for any list of the year’s best books” (Fortune). “Part John Grisham-like thriller, part business and political memoir.” —The New York Times This is a story about an accidental activist. Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune. Along the way he exposed corruption, and when he did, he barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky wasn’t so lucky: he ended up in jail, where he was tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime and has spent the last half decade on a campaign to expose it. Because of that, he became Putin’s number one enemy, especially after Browder succeeded in having a law passed in the United States—The Magnitsky Act—that punishes a list of Russians implicated in the lawyer’s murder. Putin famously retaliated with a law that bans Americans from adopting Russian orphans. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world, and also the story of how, without intending to, he found meaning in his life.

Book Unbroken

    Book Details:
  • Author : Laura Hillenbrand
  • Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
  • Release : 2014-07-29
  • ISBN : 0812974492
  • Pages : 530 pages

Download or read book Unbroken written by Laura Hillenbrand and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Book A Book of Golden Deeds

    Book Details:
  • Author : Charlotte Mary Yonge
  • Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
  • Release : 1927
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 276 pages

Download or read book A Book of Golden Deeds written by Charlotte Mary Yonge and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1927 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Hoosiers and the American Story

Download or read book Hoosiers and the American Story written by Madison, James H. and published by Indiana Historical Society. This book was released on 2014-10 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.

Book One for the Road

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bjørn Christian Tørrissen
  • Publisher : One for the Road
  • Release : 2008-01-07
  • ISBN : 1847994539
  • Pages : 396 pages

Download or read book One for the Road written by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen and published by One for the Road. This book was released on 2008-01-07 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building on experience from 60 countries worth of independent travel, the author takes you on three journeys to places you may never have considered visiting, although you probably should and you definitely could. Learn about a low-budget cruise to Antarctica, understand what the Trans-Siberian Railway really is like, enjoy the natural wonders of Southern Africa. The book is a fun read, but you will also learn about far-away destinations and about how to travel independently anywhere. It's not a travel guide or a travel journal, it's both!More details, including free downloads, available from http://bjornfree.com/

Book American Holocaust

    Book Details:
  • Author : David E. Stannard
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 1993-11-18
  • ISBN : 0199838984
  • Pages : 408 pages

Download or read book American Holocaust written by David E. Stannard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-11-18 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.

Book Pattern Recognition

    Book Details:
  • Author : William Gibson
  • Publisher : Penguin UK
  • Release : 2004-06-24
  • ISBN : 0141904461
  • Pages : 419 pages

Download or read book Pattern Recognition written by William Gibson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-06-24 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot . . . all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena -------------- THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ ZERO HISTORY AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE Cayce Pollard has a new job. She's been offered a special project: track down the makers of an addictive online film that's lighting up the internet. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese hackers and Russian Mafia. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is just another business strategy. The kind of people who relish turning the hunter into the hunted . . . A gripping spy thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer. Part prophesy, part satire, Pattern Recognition skewers the absurdity of modern life with the lightest and most engaging of touches. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks won't be able to put this book down. -------------- 'Fast, witty and cleverly politicized' Guardian 'A big novel, full of bold ideas . . . races along like an expert thriller' GQ 'Dangerously hip. Its dialogue and characterization will amaze you. A wonderfully detailed, reckless journey of espionage and lies' USA Today 'A compelling, humane story with a sympathetic heroine searching for meaning and consolation in a post-everything world' Daily Telegraph 'Electric, profound. Gibson's descriptions of Tokyo, Russia and London are surreally spot-on' Financial Times